Zombie Book Club

New Year, New Book Club | Zombie Book Club Ep 130

• Zombie Book Club • Season 4 • Episode 130

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The horde keeps growing, and so does the heart. We’re kicking off season four by turning our loose, joyful shenanighans into a real book club you can actually join; slow reads, inclusive picks, live conversation, and clear values that put people first. Think of it like building a survivor camp together: strong walls, warm fires, and a shared map for what we read and why it matters.

Here’s what’s new: four to five community reads a year at a humane pace; monthly author spotlights that dive into craft, worldbuilding, and big topics like mutual aid and the economics of survival; and casual dead episodes for experiments, movie talk, and small acts of preparedness. Patreon becomes our free home base for polls, voting, and book discussions where you can speak your mind as we read along. Also perks like early bonus episodes, stickers, and a zombie art calendar for paid members.

Join us June 12 - 14th at Living Dead Weekend! If you're going, let us know and we can plan a meetup. 




Come join our Zombie Survivor camp on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/ZombieBookClub

Click here to back Ollies 'MAZE 1: Staken; Not Stirred' on kickstarter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ollieeatsbrains/maze-1-staken-not-stirred

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Zombie Book Club Links

SPEAKER_02:

The only book club where the book is actually a club. And we read things together. Weird, right? Together. Together.

SPEAKER_01:

All together.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm Dan, and when I'm not reading zombie books, I'm writing a zombie book. And it's going great. Insert sarcasm.

SPEAKER_01:

Dan is being his own inner saboteur. It is going great. You're doing a good job, Dan. It's sh yeah. Uh Dan doesn't Dan's face doesn't agree with my statement. And I'm Leah. And today we are talking about some new fangled book club stuff. Welcome to season four of the club. Season four! You can find us in the club. Yeah. Bottles full of water. Did you know that we have seasons? Sort of. And then we're in the fourth one. Yeah, because our first episode was January 29th, 2023.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we've successfully completed three seasons.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Which means three years because I I I make each year a season. Something like that. Yeah. I mean, I do it. Like when I upload the episode, I determine. This is the season. Yeah, and I've I'm like, New Year, New Season.

SPEAKER_01:

New Year, new season. New Year, New Book Club. Yeah, new book club. Welcome everybody. Thank you for coming back. If you're a an an old, an old zombie, ancient and crickety, and welcome to the new folks. Yeah. Old book. Yeah. If you want to know more about who we are, I would recommend checking out episode 108. It's our podcast blind date with Dan and I.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. But not episode one.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh episode one was the one they were like, that's okay. Don't listen to the terrible pilot episode.

SPEAKER_02:

That's episode one.

SPEAKER_01:

We called it that for a reason. It was bad. Yeah. We didn't know what we were doing.

SPEAKER_02:

We just haven't deleted it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Because, you know, it's part of the public record now. And we release episodes every Sunday. So, sub deity. A minor member of a pantheon, a subordinate deity of a polytheistic religious system. Wow. AKA, please subscribe. Also five stars, please. Yes, that's five stars. And we love we love getting the DMs. Feel free to always give us a message if you're new. Oh, I love a DM. Yeah. It's the only kind of DM we get as a married couple now.

SPEAKER_02:

Do we have any DMs? Do we have any groans from the horde?

SPEAKER_01:

We do, but it's not a DM, it's a VM. A V a VM? A voice mail, my favorite old-fashioned form of communication.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

From our friend Jacob. Ziggy, our dog, is trying to currently crawl over a bunch of um pieces that should be a bathroom vanity but are not. Yeah, now they are our floor. Yeah. So have you heard that? That's what you heard. Yeah. Our little dog Ziggy. Um Jacob was on.

SPEAKER_02:

Ziggy doesn't know where he wants to be.

SPEAKER_01:

No, he's annoyed that there's a bunch of stuff on the floor. Uh Jacob was on the show for Aquarium of the Dead and gave us some very important zombie uh marine biology lessons.

SPEAKER_02:

Marine biology.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so if you've not heard that, you should check out episode 116. Uh, but for now, we have a voicemail from Jacob. So let's see what Jacob has to say to the horde.

SPEAKER_00:

Hey guys, it's your um your zombie flavor chip inventor, Jacob. Don't let anybody else tell you otherwise. And I just listened to the episode. Hopefully you guys can hear me okay. Um and I was thinking about the 10 roles that you guys put out. Uh you know, the first one that stuck out to me, probably because it was one of the first ones that popped up on the list, um, was the visionary. I definitely think that I see myself in a not just in a zombie apocalypse community, but like in any community, uh trying to put stuff together to get the get the community started, get them involved, you know, put together some kind of fun event. And putting it together involved some sort of building, right? You know. Uh so when you brought up the builder role, I was like, yeah, I can see myself putting together, hey, you're gonna be part of this. I'm gonna help you be part of this. Let's form a community to put this event together that I'm a vision. And then lastly, I think a role that I kind of see myself in is just a caregiver. I'm a big coffee, really. Uh person. So whenever I see someone that's in need, I just I can't help myself. Which unfortunately, I think might be my doom in a zombie apocalypse, just because I see some kind of person that might seem as a survivor, someone that's off out on their own, and I'm like, let me help you. Oh my gosh, here, here, take the take the rest of the water, take the food, and then they or they end up being a raider or something like that, or they got hit and voted. So being a caregiver might shoot myself in the foot. But you know, that's just who I am. Well, anyway, I love the podcast. I love hearing what you guys and what roles you'd be a part of. And uh, yeah. So next time you see zombie flavor chips, think of me. Every time.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. Jacob's original zombie chip idea was stolen by Taki. What? You don't remember that story? Yeah, I forgot about that. Also, Jacob, I think you're the perfect person for a raider to meet because they're not even gonna have to try. They're you're just gonna be like, hey, here you go. Yeah, raiders need help too. They might even be like, you should come with us if you just give us our stuff. Yeah. Then you'd be a raider. That would be the problem. They wouldn't like how you ended up offering things to the people you're supposed to be stealing things from.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Imagine Jacob as a raider. Like I can't. He's got like tires for pauldrons on his shoulders. He's got like um, like a leather get up from a sex shop as as like the shirt. Wow. Just like the leather Conan the Barbarian straps. Jacob, how do you feel about this outfit that Dan is giving you right now? A loincloth made of chains, and um, and he's just like, hey guys, uh we're supposed to be robbing you right now, but is there anything that you need?

SPEAKER_01:

Here's some bread I made. I uh Jacob and I were talking about recently, and he was getting into making bread and wanting to share it with his neighbors.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, yeah. So that's the kind of raider I want to run into.

SPEAKER_01:

Here's a fresh loaf of bread. Uh, if you're curious what episode Jacob was referring to, just a few episodes ago we had a conversation with the 10 must-have roles you need for your zombie apocalypse team, and Jacob fulfills three of them a visionary, a builder, and a caregiver. I think you know, Jacob, you're always on our in our in our club.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Our survivor club. That's a great combination of things.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I really want to sing Fitty Cent. Don't. Okay. That's acceptable.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, Leah, it's it's no longer 2025 anymore. Thank fucking God. Which means now we can just look back on 2025 and remember it fondly with gratitude. Oh, yeah. You know, I we let's start with some gratitude. Yeah, for 2025.

SPEAKER_01:

We're gonna do some gratitude of top five gratitude, top five whoopsies, and then talk a little bit about where we're going in 2026. Yeah. And some new book club reads we have planned for you all. So before we get into the whoopsies, we gotta do the gratitudes. Yeah, what are we gratituding for?

SPEAKER_02:

Uh gratitude at all. So we have five. We have five gratitudes. Just five. Yeah, only five for the whole year. Uh I see number one. And I think this is a big one because I I think this is one of mine too. Uh, Living Dead weekend. It was our first live event. Uh, and that was also a big event, too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, and also it was is where we met our zombie's and and also met some new ones. Like that was the first time that we met Alice B. Sul Sullivan and Courtney Constantine. And Joe Salazar. Yeah, first time. Remember, in person. We talked many times with Joe Salazar, but this was before we even interviewed Alice or Courtney.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, then we met Carl from Wither Novels. We met so many people.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh check out the Living Dead weekend episode where we actually have an interview, a set of interviews from all the people that we met with. Also, Brandon was there. Brandon was there. Yeah. It was also where he threatened to steal Lori's crown. It's true. And we got someone in slammed down, which we'll talk about when we get to our whoopsies. Uh, but that was an incredible experience. Dan, you had to take some gummies to some CBDs to calm yourself because you're not a really a big crowd guy.

SPEAKER_02:

I couldn't take the THCs because you know it was the work season, but I figured a couple CBD gummies I could probably get away with. Um, so I I think it worked. I can't I had a surprisingly good time. I didn't think I was going to because I have some severe social anxiety problems and other problems uh on top of that. But but uh but yeah, despite the huge crowds, despite like the constant uh people walking up to us and and talking, I actually had a good time because like the the realization is that when you go to a place like this, you're surrounded by people that just are into the same thing that you're into. So like there's not a whole lot of pressure to like make small talk because the small talk is which Romero movie is your favorite.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a great time. I mean, it reminds me of when we talked about festivals with Jacob because Jacob has a podcast called Viva La Festiva.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And that's what he said. It's like you go somewhere and you can find people who love the same thing as you. We're going back this year. There's probably one or two more Living Dead weekend events before Walmart takes it over completely than Monroeville Mall.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Which I think demolition starts in 2027.

SPEAKER_02:

We thought that the one that we went to was going to be the last one or the second to last one. But we're we're getting another one.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so we're going back. You should come. If you've never been and you love zombies, uh it's January. Plan for it. It's June 12th to the 14th, I'm pretty sure. Uh, we'll put the link in the show notes. I would love to see you there. It's an amazing time. And if we know you're coming, we could actually organize a meetup. So if you're interested, let us know.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, a meetup would be great. It would be really fun. We're like, we're meeting at the Chipotle.

SPEAKER_01:

Is there a Chipotle? Uh I thought you hated Chipotle. Yeah, but I like meeting up there. The smoothies were really good in the mall. The mall has a good smoothie place. Yeah. Um, I got my zombie crown signed by Tom Zavini there. It was great. Number two, gratitude. We had actually correction. I just realized we had 30 interview episodes. Because you forgot Jacob? I did. Aquarium of the Dead, but that was because I was going by people's faces.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

On the covers. So that was a mistake, and I am sorry. Um, but 30 or so 30 guest episodes, 22 of them were author interviews. So almost every other interview, if we'd actually done it that way, or every other episode was an interview.

SPEAKER_02:

That's a huge number. Like, I I never really thought about how many people we were talking to on this podcast. So, like, when I saw that number, I'm like, is that right? I feel like like in my mind, we haven't even done 30 episodes this year. We've done at least 32. I'm like, how many episodes have we done this year? 10? Plus some bonus ones.

SPEAKER_01:

We also had our first in-person interview. If you don't count the Living Dead weekend, I mean like with an author.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

With one of our favorite humans, Alice B. Sullivan, came to our house sitting right beside us where we are right now and almost killed me with the tiny crowbar that we gave her as a gift.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, she also almost killed the microphone. But you know what she didn't almost kill was any of the dogs. Yeah. Uh she she has an an uncanny ability to destroy everything around her except for animals. Um, in which case she destroys herself in the process of protecting them from herself. Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a great episode.

SPEAKER_02:

Go check it out. Um number four. Um, oh yeah. So we got some really great um moral and financial support. Uh when Leah lost her job. Boo. Boo back in September. September, right?

SPEAKER_01:

September 5th was my official last day.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um, but people kept kept the podcast going financially because you know, when we were suddenly wondering where all of our money is gonna come from, it's nice to know that at least we don't have to pay for the expenses of of the podcast, which we'd never really done the math before, but turns out it's kind of significant.$183 a month. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It doesn't include book purchases. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I just wanted to say a personal thank you to everybody who financially donated, but also just the people who are like, hey, I hope you're doing okay. Um here's a cute video of a puppy to make you feel better. Also, some folks reached out and were like, I work for this really cool company. Like, if you um work for them, then I get a bonus and you get a bonus for starting. And unfortunately that didn't work out. Oh. Uh, but I thought it was really kind.

SPEAKER_03:

Well, yeah, that is nice.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um, and I'm yes, I am still officially unemployed in the beginning of 2026. Fairly confident that will change soon. Um, we'll have a meltdown episode if by February I don't have a job secured.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, we'll uh we'll we'll have an episode that's just all crying.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it will be Leah's meltdown. We'll call it oops, all crying.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um we also have extreme gratitude for Brandon Staraki framing his mustache and sending it to us, uh, as well as uh Lori Calcatero and uh she won the Summerween slam down. Um he removed his mustache, put it in a frame, and he sent he sent one to each.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, he sent us the leftovers. Yeah. Lori got the better version of the mustache, but I'm okay with that because Lori won it. Yeah. And I thought it was very kind of him to share some of his literal DNA with us. Yeah. Now we can frame him for murders. Yeah, uh, we could save it for the future and potentially clone a Brandon.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, that'd be that'd be great. It'd be like a really messed up Brandon clone. Be like, it's like, here's our guest, Brandon Staraki, and just this horrible mass of flesh comes out and just like, my kill.

SPEAKER_01:

That's terrifying. We're not good at cloning. Brandon, do we have your permission to clone you? I have a 3D printer. I did wasn't just stick the mustache in there and it'll just pop out of Brandon. Yeah. Yeah. So a little backstory for those who don't know, Sorrow Ween Slamdown was the result of Brandon Staraki challenging Lori Calcaterra for her Zombie Wien crown as the inaugural Zombie Wien game show winner. There's a lot of lore here at Zombie Book Club if you're new.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, but don't worry, you'll catch up. We'll give you the deets as things evolve. There'll be another Zombie Wien game show in October of 2026.

SPEAKER_02:

That's when Zombie Wien is. Yeah. It's I mean, check your calendars. The first, the only Zombie Wien game show. Yeah. Uh Leah. Yeah. There were some whoopsies. Oh no. We mentioned this before.

SPEAKER_01:

Um I feel like if you could get a banana sound effect, banana slipping sound effect right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I was gonna say, how what is a banana sound effect? Like we flipped.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, it's like a slip, is it a slippy something like that. Like a slide whistle.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Okay. Insert slide whistle sound here. Yeah. Um, Leah, what is your number one whoopsie?

SPEAKER_01:

Accidentally traumatizing any person who listened to the Summer Wayne Slam Down, who was a child of divorce. Because when Brandon Staraki challenged Lori Calcatera, both incredible zombie comic creators, by the way, for her crown that she'd already won. It was an online beef, okay? It was an online beef that had been brewing for about a year. And I was like, when I designed these questions for them both to compete with each other to win either the crown or have his mustache shaved off, I was like, I want this to be Jerry Springer as fuck. And so I designed it to be deliberately antagonistic. And then when it started, immediately regretted that decision because they absolutely embodied that. I mean, it was all for fun, it wasn't real, but they knew how to improv as frenemies and it was intense. And I had a whole thing where they had to pretend to be children of divorce. Or no, parents, sorry. They were um married and Sylvester Barzi, two-time Zombie Wien King champion, um, was judging, and he informed us that uh he was himself a child of divorce and and was a little bit traumatized by having to choose between Lori and Brandon as his parent to keep with to stay with in the zombie apocalypse.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, it's bad enough that the listeners were traumatized when they could just turn it off and skip to the next episode. But Sylvester Barsey had to stick around for the whole episode in real time. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh still offering that therapy session, Sylvester, if you want it. I've got a great therapist. I would I would give you a one-time therapy session with her.

SPEAKER_02:

Sylvester, do you need a therapist?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, now you do. But uh not offering it to anybody else because we put trigger warnings at the beginning of that episode. But I've learned if there's a new online beef, I'm gonna keep the questions a little more fun, like typical zombie ween style, and not um role play being two parents who are getting divorced and hate each other and are trying to convince Sylvester, your child, to go with you into the wasteland. Maybe that was too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Let's not let's not do that again.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Uh what else? What are some other whoopsies of 2025?

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, you know, one of one of the whoopsies that we've, you know, noticed recently is that uh we've we've really not been super clear about our stance on AI, uh, which is that we don't like it. Yeah, no, thank you. Uh so we've we've we've uh done our best to put it out there without like hurting anyone's feelings as much as we could. Uh that we're probably not going to prioritize um books that have AI covers. Um obviously AI writing. Obviously AI writing. Uh I think that's that's a given. I think most people can get on board with that, but yeah, it's it's one of those things where I think there's just a a lot of division uh about um generative AI and whether or not it's okay to use it. Um which we don't think we can. And you know, we talked a lot about this in I forget what episode it was, a recent one. Um episode 126.

SPEAKER_01:

Um yeah. And um I think we can leave it there. If you if you want to hear our AI policy, you can you can listen to that. But the the short version is uh we are prioritizing authors who have book covers that are drawn by real people without the use of AI. Yeah. And we're gonna have a whole episode about that. Likely coming out in February, but things take time. I'm not gonna make a promise of what exact episode that's gonna be because we're doing a lot of research right now.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and we've had our own AI blunders in the past, so like we're coming at it from a place of compassion as much as we can because we know that it's it's difficult out there. We know it's hard, and we know it's not super clear what's okay right now.

SPEAKER_01:

A lot of people have no idea what actually is happening. Um, and corporations have done a very good job of making us think that this is okay.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But we'll get into that another time. But still, I think it would have been better to be clearer earlier, then we might not have hurt some feelings that we did. Yeah. Yeah. Um number three, this was my whoopsie specifically. We're at Living Dead weekend. So many Gen Xers came up to me and they're like, Do you have a Facebook group? And I was like, No. And then their face would fall and they basically walk away. That was the end. That's the end. And so on an impulse, on a whim, I was like, all right, I'm gonna make a Facebook group. But I did not do any research on how they work. Um, I really went with the group because I didn't want to make a page, because I felt like a group would be more likely to have people see what I was making. I felt like a page would be just like one more thing that I'm having to promote against all the other businesses, because that's how it's thought about as a business, even though this is not a money making um venture for us. And what I learned really quickly was that it became a place. For people to just dump their links and leave. Um, so again, a thank you to Alice B. Sullivan and Courtney Constantine. The two of you just like watching how you work in groups has really helped me learn how to do things. I actually set up some rules. Whoa, really? I know. Yeah, there's rules in the Facebook now, which includes you can promote yourself yourself once a month, but you need to make it interactive, like ask a question of the audience, something like that. Yeah. Um I'm still figuring it out. They they know a lot about Facebook groups. Courtney's Facebook, Courtney Constantin's Facebook, like if you want a great uh zombie Facebook group, I would check that one out.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um mine, uh aka ours, although Dan never goes there, Zombie Book Club Zombesties Facebook group, you should join it because you pity me.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh yeah. Join it if you don't use Instagram.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, or Patreon, which we'll talk about in a minute. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um we we should just have somebody run it for us.

SPEAKER_01:

We should.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Who wants to run our Facebook account? Nobody. Nobody wants that job.

SPEAKER_01:

Unless we paid them, which we cannot do. We can't pay you. It's it's an unpaid internship. Oh my god, I would never no. Uh so this leads me to our fourth whoopsie. I think something we've realized is uh the last year and a half or so, we have really focused on interviews and a lot of conversations about books and people who write books, but we didn't have a regular place for those discussions or like a regular schedule of like these are the books we're reading and we're gonna talk about them, and here's um an opportunity to like add your ideas and thoughts. We did that in the first season, and then it just became full-blown interviews. And sometimes interviews that we had planned months in advance, sometimes ones that we crammed in because someone had a release date, and sometimes we needed something.

SPEAKER_02:

Sometimes interviews that didn't happen because the author ignored us.

SPEAKER_01:

That also happened, yes. So, yeah, there's there's books that we want to talk about that like the reality is is the author's dead, or sometimes that happens to be we don't exist to that author. And that's okay. We're dead. Yeah. We're dead or they're dead. We never existed. We don't, we're not there, we're not real. Um, and so we're gonna change that this year. We're gonna be alive. We're gonna we're gonna have a schedule for books. Oh, right. Yeah. So people can read along with us. Um which leads me to number five. Dan, are you a fast reader?

SPEAKER_02:

No. No, no, I'm I'm a I write faster than I read. And I don't write that fast.

SPEAKER_01:

Some would say you're a very fast fast writer, but you are an even faster deleter. Oh, I delete real fast. Yeah, you love to delete words.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I'm my my word count for this season is in the negatives of tens of thousands.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's why Dan's not feeling so excited right now. Um, but we really tried um to read literally everything from everyone. And we're a small podcast, and there's like there's clearly a market and a place for zombie books and zombie authors because there's a lot of great books out there, but with our reading pace, we can't read them all. And we really try I tried to read them all. I wanted to read them all. Any if I didn't read your book, if you didn't get on the the podcast last year, it it is no reflection of our interest or desire to read your book. It is a reflection of the fact that we are human with slow reading skills.

SPEAKER_02:

We we have a big pile of books.

SPEAKER_01:

Stacking up in front of our TV. It keeps growing because I just impulse purchased another one today. Oh no. When will we read it? I don't know, but it's there.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I just like looking at them.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So we're not gonna do that anymore. Um, and that's why 2026 we have some different plans for how we're gonna manage uh author interviews, book reads as a book club of people reading things together, and other kinds of episodes like our casual debt episodes where we just talk about whatever we want to, movie reviews, anything else that we feel like because that's what this place is. Uh so Dan, what's uh happening for 2026? We're gonna be more intentional. Um we're planning with purpose.

SPEAKER_02:

Pl planning with purpose. Yeah. Um about how we read together and how we spotlight zombie creators. That's kind of what we were just talking about.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Um and our big goal is really to uplift zombie stories uh and voices that usually are not in the mainstream.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And that's always been the case.

SPEAKER_01:

And we just want to do that more. And re and be explicit about it. Yeah. Is another reason why we're going to have book club reads where we may not interview the author because those authors may not be available of books we really want to read. Or again, they're dead, like Frank Etienne of Des Affies no longer with us. Yeah. Or we're dead to them. Yeah. Jorge Sanchez of Deadbreak, impossible to find.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I tried to contact Jorge, but yeah, just and that's no, no good.

SPEAKER_01:

Not every author wants to be interviewed. Not every author has a strong social media presence. Uh, there's lots of reasons, and that shouldn't stop us from reading their books together.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, so there's some that we've really wanted to for a long time. So this will give us an opportunity to do that. But we're gonna prioritize authors who are uh LGBTQ plus IA, um, folks who are black, brown, indigenous from the global majority from other parts of the world than the United States, um, women. And if you're a white guy listening right now and thinking, well, I'm never gonna get on the podcast, that's not true. I'm a white guy. Yeah, you there's evidence of one right here who was writing a book. Um, and so there's uh there's a place for everyone here, and we're going to make those kinds of prioritizations because often they are really, really powerful stories and they're not getting enough attention. Yeah. Um in fact, we didn't even know that there were stories like that when we started this podcast. I just assumed it was going to be a bunch of white male power fantasy.

SPEAKER_02:

I did too. Yeah, and I was pleasantly surprised when we started discovering people outside of that expectation.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think it's what I would say is like uh there are a lot of I've been writing reading um white male authors that don't write white male power fantasy books. And those are going to be the ones that we're reading on the book club if we are reading them. Like Dan's book does not fit that description. And Dan is at least I hope so. Not all white men. Doing my best. Nahwum, not all white men. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um, I mean, there's there's there's room for those stories too, but you know, we're we're looking, we're looking for the the deeper meanings here.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That's uh that's how I feel, anyways.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and like I said, we uh people have been asking us for a real book club space. I had one person reach out and be like, How do I join the club? And I was like, Oh, you were expecting like that we live in up to this book club.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

This person thinks we're a club. We should have a schedule with books that we read. Oh. Um, and so we're gonna do that. We're gonna slow down. We're not gonna burn ourselves out by trying to read everything all the time. We're gonna have book club reads, and then we're gonna have author spotlights and other kinds of stories and episodes. Yeah. Um, we're gonna use a bunch of different episode formats to fit each of those different needs, and we're gonna have Patreon as our home base. But to be clear, that doesn't mean you have to pay a single cent to be a part of our club. That is very important to me. None of the important things that are a part of being a community are going to be um blocked by how much you can pay. Anything that you pay towards us is a thank you, and we appreciate it if you can, but it's not all that matters to us. So just want to say that off the bat here.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's more just a space for us to have discussions because that's that's something that they that they offer. Like if you go to Patreon, you can comment on things, you can make posts, uh, and we can we can organize that way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Uh our zombie book club criteria is pretty simple. We're gonna read four or five books a year together as a group. Uh if you opt in, you don't have to read it. You can you can listen. Um, but basically, the big the big purpose here is to have a community shared story that we sit with together that allows us to explore the themes of what it means to be human and how we might build better worlds in the apocalypses we're already living through, because that's something that's important to us here at Welling Book Club. And so there's just three criteria. At least 50% of our book club reads will center authors or protagonists from groups that are historically underrepresented in zombie fiction. I've already named them. Uh it's human-created work only, aka no AI, and there needs to be an audiobook available because people read in different ways nowadays. It's one of our biggest barriers to reading everything because both of us are better at auditory reading.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And also if that audiobook is available on like through your library.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh, so that people who can't uh who who don't who don't have the expense ability to put to buy an audiobook.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, the ideal is that it's uh is library available. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Library that's the word I was looking for.

SPEAKER_01:

Libraryable.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Isn't there an app? Is that what Libby is? Yes. I haven't downloaded it.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I don't know if it's an audiobook app, but it is a Libby app. It's the Libby app. We have to do some research on it. Um the first read of the year is pre-selected. And maybe you can take a grass guess what it is. Oh, don't say it. Oh we're gonna just we're gonna reveal it on Patreon. Oh, okay. I won't say it. It's the 15th anniversary of this book by a very incredible author that I have wanted to read, but if we ever had him on the podcast, he would be um shocking. Whoa yeah, I've tried. I actually don't know what this book is. I've told you many times.

SPEAKER_02:

You've told me many times I don't remember.

SPEAKER_01:

You'll have to go to the Patreon to find out.

SPEAKER_02:

I will. I'm gonna go there. I'm going there right now.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, after that one, we're going to have polls on Patreon of which book we should read next. We'll give you some pre-selected options and then we'll decide together as a community what the next one is. Yeah, I like that.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And what we're gonna do now, we're gonna we're gonna try something new out. We're gonna have live, unrecorded book club discussions with Patreon members. Again, all you have to be is a free member to participate. Uh, video, no video, so you don't have to be seen. You can communicate and talk, or you could just be listening in. But we're gonna just talk about the book and hear what you have to say. And then that, depending on when we have that conversation and with your consent, that may inform the recorded episode. But we want a space that's actually a book club that's not the pressure of like you're gonna have to hear yourself in a podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

Unless you want to.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, that's an option.

SPEAKER_01:

In which case we talk about that. Um, and that's when you get to be a part of our hot takes contributions to the episode.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, I like these hot cakes.

SPEAKER_01:

Hot cakes, hot takes. Uh so again, that's only four to five times a year because we're slow readers and we don't want to um overwhelm people either. Because I know that I personally admire people who dedicate a lot of their time to reading and read like more than a hundred books a year. Um, I'm really proud if I get through 25. That's a that's a big accomplishment for me. Um, which thanks to this book club, I am getting to around that number. But uh you don't have to participate in that because there's also all these other things. If that's not what you want to do, we're gonna have author spotlights so that we can talk to more creators more often than our eyes can keep up with reading, uh, at least once a month, because there's lots of readers out there that may have different tastes that are excited to hear read these books, and they're on our TBRs 99% of the time, even if we haven't gotten to them and we talk to the author. We'll talk about their books, we'll talk about their writing process, and then we'll choose a specific zombie topic with them that we want to dive into. Could be a book or a movie we're talking about, or like we hate capitalism. Let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_02:

It's my favorite topic.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

We're also gonna keep doing the casual deads. Casual deads are my favorite. What's a casual dead? It's when we're casual and we're dead. Um, yeah, this is more like the you know, life updates, uh, real-world apocalypse stuff. This is when we like to talk about like what what what what kind of survival skills do baby animals have? Yeah. Um, what's going on with capitalism?

SPEAKER_01:

Let's do the hundred dollar. Oh, I don't like Amazon anymore. Um, the hundred dollar shop local to survive challenge.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh that actually would be a fun one. Uh co-op at in Vermont challenge Vermont Store Challenge. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_01:

That's I think we literally just created an episode for a casual day, but not just Vermont. The hundred dollars, that's gonna get me like nothing. Like some maple syrup. I think like every we'll have an episode, people get to participate and they can do the hundred dollar challenge. You don't actually have to spend the money. Yeah, but you can have a fictional hundred dollars. You go to a local store, not a local chain of a store, but a local store and see what you'd be able to get for a hundred bucks to survive the zombie apocalypse and let us know. Um, we're also gonna have more podcast double dates this year. We love doing that with the good words book club and podcast. Go check them out. They are officially one of our absolute favorite podcasts, along with reanimated podcasts, who I'm just gonna say right now, would love to have on the show.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, and we're gonna keep talking about movies and TV and stuff. Those things are all gonna be in there. But I think the the bread and butter of the podcast is the book club and the author spotlights.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, because we've been doing so many um author spotlights and and stuff, uh, I feel like the the movie and TV part kind of like went to the wayside. We've watched so many zombie movies that we intended to talk about and then just never did.

SPEAKER_01:

I think like Queens of the Dead, for example. Which is gonna be a bonus episode for everybody who goes and joins Patreon right now. The link is in the show notes.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's gonna be there. I mean, we haven't recorded it as of right now, but when you listen to it, we'll it'll be there on the Patreon. Probably.

SPEAKER_01:

Definitely I got a lot of work ahead of me this weekend. We have been procrastinating and rotting on the couch as one does between Christmas and New Year's. So let's talk about the Patreon again. It's like our our zombie book club survivor group.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, a bunker, if you will.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, or uh camp. A camp.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. It's a survivor camp.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, maybe it's underground, maybe it's not. We can decide that together as I think right now we're we're we have like tents.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. And some barbed wire. That's a shitty situation. Yeah, we gotta upgrade.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh the good news is that we are much like oh fuck, what's that place called in The Walking Dead? Um, much like Terminus in The Walking Dead. We're Terminus. All who arrive survive. But they didn't. Except that we don't eat you. Oh. And you don't need to give us any beans to participate and to stay. You don't have to pay to belong here. Again, it is uh intentionally a pay what you can thing where like maybe you get some fun perks if you uh are able to throw some cash our way, like a sticker of the month club or the annual calendar, or some other fun stuff like that. But all of the other stuff we're gonna be doing as a book club, as a survivor camp, is available for anybody who joins. Um, it's our home base for book club discussion RSVPs, uh, community chats, polls, and voting on what books we're gonna read next, who you want to hear us talk to. Any kind of early announcement or update is gonna be there. And you'll also get some occasional earlier bonus episodes like the Queens of the Dead one on Patreon before anybody else. And you don't have to pay a cent to get that. You just gotta be there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It's just it's just gonna be there.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And all you have to do, if you're like, I hate Patreon, all you have to do is sign up to make sure you get the email notification when we post something, and you'll know what's going on via your email.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And if we can figure it out, we're gonna sync the podcast to Patreon as well. So you could just listen to it there if that's your jam.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Dan and I uh entered a rabbit hole, not a rabbit hole, Groundhog Day of Circular Thinking that is the Patreon website right now, but we will figure it out. Yeah, we'll link our podcast.

SPEAKER_02:

It's like, yeah, just go here and click uh link your RSS feed to the Patreon. And then we did that, and it's like start a new podcast. And we're like, that's not what we want to do. Um, so yeah, we gotta figure this out. We do something's not right.

SPEAKER_01:

We're gonna figure it out. We're gonna figure it out. So there will be paid tiers there if you're in a position, you've got some extra beans. We appreciate them. I am still unemployed. Um, and also I don't know what our financial future looks like exactly, but it would be nice to at least have some of the costs of this little club of ours covered. Um, but you don't have to pay a single thing. You are a valued member regardless. And as a thank you for taking the leap to join our Patreon community, you can not only check out the Queens of the Dead episode first, it will be released publicly in probably a few weeks as a bonus episode. But we are also doing the release of our first shared book club read, the 15th anniversary of some book. Yeah, some book that you don't know yet. I don't know. But I think people will be excited. Um, you'll find a save the date invite there for our first free live zombie book club discussion if you're interested in joining. We'll have a poll there to say if you're interested. And we're doing a giveaway. A giveaway! A giveaway. What are we giving away? The 2026 zombie art calendar that we did that has all of the dates and anniversaries of different and important zombie media, upcoming movies that we knew about when I made it in November. There's some other ones I now know about, but they're not in there because I made it in November. But anyways, the ones we know about are there. It's all original art by me, Dan, and our brother-in-law, or I guess your brother. My brother, who's an incredible artist. And I uh went down a deep dive and researched a bunch of dates. And you know what? You can let me know if you get this calendar if I'm wrong. There are at least two that we're gonna give away, plus some original zombie art posters, some original zombie art stickers, and some other fun goodies. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I might I might be putting some art up as well. Yeah. And I'll just I've been I've been making art like a fiend.

SPEAKER_01:

You have been, and I have two print posters of your art ready to go of one of your zombies that you drew. Oh, really? Yeah. Can I have one? No. I mean, we can print another one. Okay, okay. But the goal here is to give away as many things to as many people as possible. So there won't just be one prize, there will be many prizes. And every single person who joins the Patreon for free or paid, as of January 13th, has a chance to win. Doesn't matter what tier you are. Um, we'll announce the winner on January 15th and we'll get you that calendar right away so you can enjoy the latter half of January.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Um January is my favorite um art image on the calendar. It is our it's our cozy, like in a sleeping bag. There's zombies outside. There's cans of beans that have been opened. There's a little um trash bin with a fire in it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, trash can fire. It's my you know, this is my dream. We're on the floor sleeping.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, but not as much my dream.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. There's a crowbar, a bloody crowbar leaning against the wall that Alice left behind. Where's Alice? Where's Alice? There's the crowbar. Yeah. I don't know where Alice is. She should be in the other room, maybe the the trash fire. Maybe she's in a uh sleeping bag on the other side of the trash fire. She's taking the picture. In fact, that's where you all are. Yeah. All of our zombie book club survivor members are on the other side of the trash pan. Trash pan. Trash panda. That's where my brain went.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow. Yep. We should probably end this episode. We should. Because our brains are deteriorating. Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

So come join the free Patreon. It is on the show notes, in the show notes, something like that. Thank you for joining Zombie Book Club as a free survivor or a paid one. Share your beans. And go listen to our bonus Queens of the Dead episode right now and say hello in the welcome post. Thank you so much. Stay human. We love you. Bye bye. Bye.

Contributor

Dan

Host
Contributor

Leah

Host